Author: Jeff Morgan (Page 258 of 260)

Battlefield 1943 Sees Huge Launch, Coral Sea to Unlock Soon

July 13, 2009 / Jeff Morgan

I’ve been stuck away from home this weekend for a few family events, which means I’ve been missing out on the absolute carnage taking place over Battlefield servers. In the first day of action alone there were more than 5 million kills recorded (for the 360 alone!), pushing everyone ever closer to the ‘Coral Sea’ map unlock, which requires total kills of 43 million for each platform. As it stands, the 360 market is well ahead of the PS3.

It’s not surprising to see Xbox Live numbers topping those of Playstation Network. What is surprising is the sheer number of hours, well, years actually, people logged on 1943’s first day. How much time, you ask? How about 29.45 years on the first day. Yes, just shy of the 30 year mark.

As VG247 put it, you lot should probably go outside.

News, PS3, Xbox 360

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iPhone Gamers Love New Games, Want Them Less Than $2

July 12, 2009 / Jeff Morgan

The folks at PocketGamer.biz recently took a look at the iPhone gaming situation to come away with some cold, hard data about what people are buying and why. I’ll spare you the full report (really I just don’t want to leech all the credit here) and focus instead on some of the more interesting details.

For standards, PG took a snapshot of the top 100 applications and then broke down the results by price, price by rank, games by publisher, and source (new IP, console port, music, movie, etc.).

Pricing was actually different than you might think. While most of the top 100 came in the $.99 category (36 titles), second place went to the $4.99 bracket with 20 titles. But that’s just number of games for each price bracket. Obviously since they are top 100 these are games that are getting downloaded a lot, but how much do the games get played after downloading?

If you look at price by rank, the top 10 games average just $1.89/download. At 11-20, the price drops to $1.19. Of course there are a load of factors that could contribute to the rankings. Are people really playing these cheap games more or are they just deleting them more often and so being prompted to rate more of these games?

Perhaps the most useful statistic, at least to industry developers, is the rate of new downloads and the desire for new IP. Of the top 100 games, 40 were released in June or July (this likely includes a few updates). Another 22 were April or May releases. As for IP, 52 of the top 100 are fresh content, designed just for the iPhone.

If you’re downloading games, where does your allegiance lie? Are you a bargain shopper, only buying apps that are cheap or on sale? Or do you look for the best IPs from hot developers, regardless of price?

Mobile Gaming

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Scribblenauts Could Make a Platform Migration

July 11, 2009 / Jeff Morgan

We’ve already heard some good news from PopCap today regarding Plants vs. Zombies coming to multiple platforms. There’s more good news folks. Remember that sleeper hit from E3 this year, Scribblenauts? The one that lets you pit Albert Einstein and God against a kraken? The game I want so badly I could nearly wet myself?

Yes, that game. And it might be coming to multiple platforms. I have to say “might” because in his interview with vg247.com, Scribblenauts technical director Marius Fahlbusch does some serious ass-covering. When asked the big question (regarding other platforms), he said, “The concept would definitely work on other platforms as well and we’ve seen gamers from very different backgrounds pick it up and enjoy it equally.”

Yeah, no kidding! The minute I heard the concept, and that it actually worked, I’ve wanted it on my PC, my 360, and my iPhone, and I wanted to be playing them all simultaneously. Again, as with PopCap and Plants vs. Zombies, there’s no word on when this could even potentially become a reality. I would guess around the time the DS version has made 5th Cell enough money to cover some of the development cost on other platforms. And it will. That game is going to explode.

News, Previews

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Plants Vs. Zombies Coming to Other Platforms

July 11, 2009 / Jeff Morgan

This week Kombo.com got a chance to talk to Garth Chouteau, Senior Director of Public Relations at PopCap Games, you know, the guys responsible for hits like Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies. The Kombo interview focused on the future of the company, and whether there would be much more handheld/console content from them in the near future. There’s at least one piece of news I’m absolutely in love with.

Chouteau led up to the big news by talking about the success of Peggle on Xbox Live, which led the company to think about other games they could port to new platforms, including, you guessed it, the incredibly addictive Plants vs. Zombies. Here’s an excerpt from the podcast:

…Peggle for XBLA is a good example of a game that we took that was popular on the PC and we spent probably twice as long as anyone else would have figuring how to make that game really good for Xbox and Xbox Live Arcade, and I think you will see that with Plants Vs. Zombies–I don’t know the exact order in which that game will make its way onto other platforms, but it’s certainly been successful enough, quickly enough, that we’re looking at other platforms and deciding where we’ll take that game next…

Awesome, except it’s going to kill my productivity. Having PvZ on my computer is bad enough. Now I can have it virtually anywhere and so can you, if you have an iPhone that is. Chouteau addressed the mobile development issue like so:

…I don’t think you’ll see Plants vs. Zombies on a mobile phone. I think you may see it on the iPhone…some of our games, we would just say, ‘you know? We could probably sell a million of these, but people aren’t going to be happy with it…

Hey now, who asked you to care about the integrity of your product, Chouteau? Actually, I think this is pretty nice. The iPhone version of the game would have to be scaled considerably, and other mobiles would likely be even more limited, if for nothing more than screen space.

Still no word on release dates or even development progress. This is great news, though, and I’ll be anxiously awaiting the launch.

Reviews

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Analyst Says Starcraft II Won’t Release On Time

July 10, 2009 / Jeff Morgan

According to a recent WSJ article, analysts are expecting Starcraft II to catch some delays. The article is based on speculation from Stern Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia, who thinks the latest from Blizzard will see the same fate as Activision’s Singularity. The time-manipulating FPS has been pushed into Q1 2010.

Originally set to release this October, Bhatia doesn’t think the SC:II delay would hurt Activision in any way. It’s hard to think that a serious Starcraft release could ever hurt that company (and no, I don’t consider the original Starcraft:Ghost concept to be serious).

If SC:II does get pushed into next year I hope Blizzard has some incredible news for us at BlizzCon. New IP maybe? Just maybe? Don’t forget, BlizzCon’s happening the third week of August. If you haven’t picked up your tickets yet, I hate to say it, but you’re too late.